


Across the Realm

by ivyspinners



Category: Riddle-Master Trilogy - Patricia A. McKillip
Genre: F/M, Healing, Identity, Post-Canon, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28128075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: "I have news of Eliard," Raederle said. His eyes flicked up. Before his face could grow abstracted as he searched his bindings, she touched her fingertips to his cheek. "Good news. The first wedding of a land-ruler since the war.""Eliard?" said Morgon with some astonishment. "How did I miss that?""It was very fast, and you were a tree," said Raederle dryly.
Relationships: Morgon of Hed/Raederle of An
Comments: 18
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Across the Realm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orichalxos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orichalxos/gifts).



> Massive thanks to edenfalling and Gammarad for the beta. Happy Yuletide, orichalxos!

On a crisp spring day, the western wind brought to a tall oak tree in Ruhn the sands of Wind Plain, the salty air of rising tide, and Raederle of An, bearing seafoam in crow's feathers and news from the distant island of Hed.

She changed back to her own shape on landing, and placed her palm and forehead onto its roughly striped bark. There, in the rings of its trunk, the maze of its roots, she felt a slow waking that might, by one less familiar, be mistaken for the warmth of spring. But she knew the shape of things, even ones that had nearly faded into another, and she thought, as much as said, "Morgon. You have not moved even once since autumn."

She withdrew her mind, and in her arms stood the High One, shaking newly unfurled leaves out of his brush of hair. "I told you I might disappear into the forest."

"You did," she said. He was still blinking at the sun, and she could not help her smile. "What did the trees say?"

"They were cold in the wind," said Morgon. "They didn't have the time or inclination to say much else."

At last he looked at her, and the vagueness of his gaze faded into the same familiar, comforting warmth no matter how they might have argued. She tipped her head up for a kiss. For a little time, one minute melted into the next.

Eventually, she pressed her fingers to his lips, holding him a breath away. "I have news of Eliard." His eyes flicked up, sharply. Before his face could grow abstracted as he searched his bindings, she touched her fingertips to his cheek. "Good news. The first wedding of a land-ruler since the war."

"Eliard?" said Morgon with some astonishment. "How did I miss that?"

"It was very fast, and you were a tree," said Raederle dryly. "I only heard when Tristan floated your crown off the coast of Akron, and I thought to bring it back. The wraiths of An fought over it until they overturned the tilled dirt, to see it stuffed again under your bed."

"When was he wed?" Morgon asked. Above their heads, a robin trilled, and as if encouraged by their stillness below, the branches teeming with birds erupted in squabbling, chattering back and forth with perceived slights. He frowned. "He doesn't feel married."

"Seven days," said Raederle, "to reach Hed with a wedding present. Morgon, if we don't arrive on time, I'm not fishing out your crown if Tristan throws it off a cliff."

\---

The sky was bright and clear as a whistle, so they flew east as falcons, catching the breeze under their wings when convenient, and swerving higher and away when not. Raederle's mind filled with small, furry things too slow to hide, given away by a quiver of long ears, a streak of white on green, and when hungry she swooped to catch them in her talons. When sated, she circled Morgon's long, graceful wings, and they dived to earth and back in a dance that came as naturally as breathing.

As the days passed, the forest parting Ruhn and Hel melted away into sandy, brown desert. With her sharp falcon eyes, here and there, Raederle could see clumps of grasses spreading in places that had not sprouted life in thousands of years, growing over jeweled pommels, swords, and vividly stained glass alike. Vines crawled in a mass over what had once been fields of dust. She showed Morgon the image she saw, and the feeling of her astonishment. He sent back a slow pleasure thrumming with the slow, inexorable heartbeat of the land.

Then abruptly, the plains became dotted with caravans, humans scurrying between them like ants. Morgon cawed in recognition, diving like an arrow.

He landed on the shoulder of a white-haired man who gazed up into the sky, seeing with a single, sharp, white eye what others could not see with two. As Raederle and Morgon changed back into their own shapes, his bemusement became surprise, then a quiet, banked joy.

"You're a feast for sore eyes," said Astrin of Ymris. "Will you join my campfire?"

They ate food for humans, flat bread, olives dipped in oil, dried meat, pickled vegetables, and spoke of the resettling of Ymris. There had been a boom of young children after the war. Now families were reclaiming farmland that had sprouted weeds in the years of their abandonment, and even land that for generations had grown nothing but dust and faded wraiths.

"Even named, I do not know them," Astrin said. "I can sense that they were once alive. I can sense even the shadow of the wraiths that have gone north. But when I feel movement on waiting land, it is the movement of my people laying down their arms."

"The rest of the realm is doing the same," Morgon said.

Raederle had almost dozed off when she heard Astrin say, softly, "Some days I wish I could disappear with them, back to my house on Wind Plain."

"Is that why you're here?" said Morgon. He had unbound his harp from his back, and was picking out single low notes, playing without thought.

“Here, to the dismay of my warlords, I am myself.” Astrin sighed, a low sound that ran together with Morgon's plucked note, plucked again and again until the sigh stretched and folded on itself. "I would trade anything for those days of searching in the city ruins, anything but the peace of Ymris."

"I cannot turn back time," said Morgon. He hid his face to Astrin, but not to Raederle in his lap.

She turned to look at Astrin, rimmed by firelight, face in deep shadow. "We are always ourselves, even when we wish we were not."

Light flashed in Astrin's eyes, both the seeing and the blind. He smiled, half-mocking, but not, she thought, at her. "It may be that you're right."

\---

Raederle and Morgon left at dawn, this time in crow's shape to fight through the stormclouds gathered on the horizon. Morgon's harping had grown the start of a melody as the night wore on; its notes rang in the back of her mind as they flew, as cozy as a firelit hearth in the rainstorm. It didn't drench her as she expected. She suspected Morgon, who disliked touching the land bindings for his ends alone, had nudged its downpour a few hours later than it should have started.

It was a funny thing to become a creature, rather than just inhabiting its skin. Raederle loved water; the kingdoms of coral beneath the sea, the salt in her hair, the limpid pools in which fish grew, nibbling on columns of seaweed. Yet as a crow, she could not stand it. When they finally flew out of the storm and into Caithnard, the entire morning gone, it was a relief to find an inn and enjoy water running through skin and hair.

"You'll never bargain with a trader looking like that," said Morgon, with a twitch of his mouth.

Raederle mopped her hair and combed it. Morgon sat with his legs crossed watching her, fingers picking out notes on his harp. She thought he had made a start on his gift to Eliard. It was time she did the same.

The clouds had parted to show chalky, textureless blue sky, and shutters and drapes closed to the rain were being lifted. The noon sun was refracted within a thousand glistening raindrops, sparkling in streets with wares of glass, cloth, flax, timber, and all manner of curiosities. Caithnard had been spared the destruction of the rest of Ymris. Raederle could hardly tell that a war had passed close, save that the College was closed to the public, receiving the treasures recovered from Lungold. Elsewhere, the streets teemed with life, with promise, with... so many options Raederle could choose ten streets with her eyes closed, and find not a single thing sold twice.

It was difficult enough to choose something for Eliard, whom she had visited a handful of times; he had struck her as someone who knew where he belonged and had the sense to be there, and seemed to want nothing that wasn't grown on Hed; plant, animal, or person. Even his bride, a trader who had seen every corner of the lands, had been a childhood friend. His bride, Raederle thought wryly, she knew not at all. And his bride, a trader that she was, could procure herself any object that might be found in Caithnard's ports and shops.

Eventually, she wandered out of the city and up the road to the ancient college. Inside, the college resembled an upset anthill, scholars scurrying around, busy transporting armfuls of books and parchment from one room to another. A harried-looking apprentice spotted her hair, and deposited three tomes in her arms that were intended for Mathom's library. Raederle did not correct him. She swept her mind for Master Tel or the wizards who liked to visit, and instead found the faintly familiar mind of the land-heir of Herun.

For the first time Raederle remembered, the mind startled back in recognition, then bursting from that recognition, shock. From what had been the library came Lyraluthuin, in a long, flowing gold robe that matched the flecks growing in her eyes. Her hands were bare, which Raederle, remembering her companion to Erlenstar and back, even now had not grown used to. Their eyes met; Lyra seemed to look through her.

"Raederle," said Lyra. "I couldn't see you. But I could feel you."

Raederle flushed. "I meant only to check if the wizards had returned here. A sorry excuse. I apologize."

Lyra shook her head and came to hold Raederle by her elbows. She had grown, and now stood half a head taller than Raederle. In her wake came Goh and Imer, spears on their backs. "It's good to see you."

They hugged, Raederle's books tucked awkwardly into her side. When Raederle pulled back, she could study the tight, drawn face longer. Between that and the touch of their minds, Raederle could see Lyra had grown in other ways that would soon be impossible to miss by those trained to look, like a star poised to burst into life.

"What brings you south to Caithnard?" Raederle asked carefully.

Lyra's face shuttered. "What else brings anyone to the College? A riddle."

"A riddle, I think," said Raederle, "about you."

Lyra stared. "Does everyone know? Does Morgon---of course he knows. The High One knows the business of all, and we know nothing of his."

She swallowed the first, instinctive defence that leapt up her throat. In her wordless, expressionless silence, Lyra sagged like a thin sapling overburdened in a rainstorm. She led Raederle back into the room from which she had appeared, and they sat on cushions between stacks of gilt-lined books and parchment in various states of decay. Lyra offered wine; Raederle sipped gratefully, wetting a mouth that had gone dry.

"I only know because you held your secret on your face," she said eventually, without rancor. "That isn't like you."

"Your business is your own," said Lyra. She was staring into the one space in the room left clear of papers, where the fireplace danced with tongues of flame. "I had a dream. I had my spear in hand again, alone in a room of spears from ages past, and with each swing and thrust the air hummed until the spears sang. They told me of the earth from which they were mined. When I woke my knives had melted in my hand."

She handed two half-melted, twisted clumps to Raederle. She could still feel a banked heat in the blackened metal, ready to flare with a single touch of flame. It was not the flickering, living fire that Raederle could shape with a touch, but the molten core of the earth far beneath. It would have burned her, had Raederle not let it touch the flame that lived in her fingers. When she handed the knives back, the air hummed like a clear, resonant note struck from gleaming metal.

Lyra said, watching light play on the edge of her knives, "On our journey, I couldn't see twine as anything but itself. Now I cannot touch even a beaten bronze mirror without knowing all that it is, all that it was, and how we took it from the earth and shaped it."

Raederle remembered Yrth who had been Deth, playing his song for the Morgol with the clear, painful ferocity of truth; felt the recognition thrill through her bones, like staring into a reflection that waved when you did not. "You have an Earthmaster's power." She studied Lyra's face. "But you are not afraid of it, as I was. You have named yourself and your riddle. Why are you here?"

For a very long time, Lyra stared into the fire, wine cup held between still, white fingers. "I did not know myself."

In the shadows of Lyra's face, which were growing sharper as the day grew into dusk, there was an odd expression. It struck a note of memory, of herself in Anuin, drowned in Ylon's despair and the fire of her anger; of Morgon, white and mute and staring unseeing.

"Lyra," she said, drawing her hands to her, "things are themselves. We twist the shapes of them. You will still be you, as you learn again."

Lyra stared at her. Then, to her surprise, Lyra laughed, melancholy banished; but Lyra had never been prone to melancholy, and she knew her corners and edges. "That's true. And I am not afraid. I've known three Earthmasters, and all three of them I have loved."

\---

Hours into conversation, a question touched her mind, like a brush of fluttering wings. She let Morgon see through her eyes the land-heir of Herun and her guards poring over old books; the land-law, the mines of Isig Mountain, the famous weapons-crafters from all corners of the realm. Raederle examined the three tomes intended for An, which she put into her sack when Morgon arrived. A genealogy of kings; an account of battle; and a life story of Madir. The genealogy, Mathom already owned. Perhaps Rood would like it more.

She drifted off again, warmed by fine Herun wine and Morgon's fingers through her hair, as Lyra and Morgon spoke into the night. _The present_ , she thought, as darkness claimed her.

\---

Instead of flying the remaining journey to Hed, unable to carry harp and book, Morgon and Raederle boarded a trade ship that crossed the strait accompanied by a school of dolphins. They chattered amongst themselves, to her, and Raederle answered in delight, a high, chirping sound that startled the horses. They made good time, aided by a strong eastern wind that hummed with Morgon's name.

By this time, the rains of winter were long gone. Raederle breathed in the scent of freshly turned dirt, mud, and vines turning green; felt, with a cast of her mind, seeds sprouting in restful dirt. Even what remained on Hed of the wraiths of the Kings of An merely gave a grumpy, sighing acknowledgement when they stepped onto land.

She almost missed Tristan at first. She was trimming her rose bushes, working carefully around the tiny buds that promised to bloom this summer, barefoot in a skirt of green wool. It was only at the sound of thumping footsteps that Raederle started. She caught a glimpse of shock on Morgon's face as Tristan crashed into him, arms around his neck.

"At this rate you will grow as tall as an oak," said Morgon, "and steal away as swift as a shadow."

"I haven't seen you in two years," said Tristan reproachfully. "And you just didn't notice me."

There was more to it, Raederle thought, but she set the idea aside for later as Tristan released Morgon, and flung her arms around Raederle. After that, there was no stopping the flood of faces. Cannon Master left his horse, Snog Nutt his hut of straw. Then those of Hed she had not met, gathered at Akren for the looming celebrations, called out a chorus of greetings. She met Maise Riverblue, Eliard's intended, who ducked out briefly to give a cheerful wave, then disappeared back to order her books so there would be no questions at her wedding.

"I knew," said Tristan, appearing by her side again without Raederle having realized it. "I knew it when Eliard saw her return with the last ships of autumn."

Raederle said, with a smile to gentle the teasing, "Did you learn foreshadowing, in your journeys across the realm?"

Tristan shrugged. "On Hed, if you plant a seed, and water it, and weed it, and show it the sun, it will grow. That is hardly foreshadowing. He made her laugh trying to be more practical than she was, until it turned into a competition where both were happy fools."

As Raederle watched the flurry of life, with the rising warmth that Hed always brought, within her heart came a single, solitary note like a struck glass. She loved Hed; she missed, feeling the weight of An's books on her back, what had once been her home. But _home_ was no longer the right word.

\---

Eliard of Hed and Maise Riverblue were married on a fine, brilliantly sunny day, attended by his people, the wraiths that rose gently from Hed's fields, and Morgon of Hed and Raederle of An. The land-rulers across the realm sent gifts: a set of fine wolf pelts for winter, a saw edged with diamond that would never grow blunt, a series of interlocking looking-glasses that could see across sea, fine wine to last the summer.

Morgon played first his gift, a warm wash of _home_ that brought tears and laughter both, sharing a small smile with Raederle, then ever faster ballads and dances that the farmers of Hed gamely kept pace with until they could not.

Raederle approached Eliard and Maise in a moment alone, looking over Hed's hills. Eliard could see the remaining kings of An, ghostly axes in hand, looking out forever west. Maise, who could not see them, listened to Eliard's placid explanations.

"Eliard, Maise," she said, and they looked at her with near identical patient faces, "would you like to know them?"

Masie’s eyes tracked a clump of dirt, tilled over by a wraith-king. She said, “They were of An, but they are here now, like unruly neighbours I cannot speak with. But they _are_ our neighbours.”

"I know," said Eliard, his shoulders rising and falling. "I can feel the seeds sprouting where their chests would be, tree's roots growing a maze into their bones."

"I have books," said Raederle. "My father won't miss them. And---I know their stories."

Eliard and Maise smiled at each other. Eliard said, with absolute equanimity, "They are of Hed now. I would like to know myself."

\---

fin.


End file.
